PHONICS VS. WHOLE WORDS

PHONICS VS. WHOLE WORDS

What method is best for your child’s reading development?

Are you going to teach your child to read using the Phonic Method or are you going to teach them to read by the Whole Word Method? Most parents don’t know the difference, so I’m going to give you a crash course.

The Phonics Method teaches children sound association with letters and combinations of letters. It teaches that each letter has certain sound(s) and when in certain groups they have definitive sounds i.e.: an, f(an), t(an), s(an)d, b(an)d, etc.

The Whole Word, also called Sight Word, Method teaches children to memorize the word. They’ll only be able to recognize a limited amount of words throughout the lifetime. With memorization, children learn to see the shape of the word. But, if there are similar looking words that they have not memorized, they’ll not know those words.

I’m a major proponent of the Phonics Method. It was the method I used to teach my children and they could all read by the age of three. By the time they went to kindergarten, they were able to read on a second-grade level. Because they were able to break down each word to specific sounds, there were not any words they could not sound out. As they got older and introduced to harder words, they could break them down no matter how difficult.

The other method will end up becoming very difficult for the reader because the English language has many words that are very similar in letters and structure. How is someone to know the difference between “visual” and “virtual” if they’ve never seen the word before, much less know what it means?

Phonics is the simplest way to learn how to read and your child will be able to read anything, always. It will make them smarter in school too. They will be eons ahead of their peers who are not being taught this method in school.

There is a wonderful Phonics based reading program that I highly recommend called Children LearningReading. Click the banner on the side of this post to discover more of this incredible method. It will enable you to actively participate in your child’s wonderful future of reading. And, you’ll have one very smart enthusiastic child excited about learning.